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The trouble with telling us just to be aware / good / positive / happy is that it ignores the fact that often we need to first learn to become aware / good / positive / happy.

Tolle and the traditional meditation schools provide us with many wonderful things. But unfortunately, in this particular area they don’t tell us enough about what’s involved. 

Consider the story of the Prodigal Son. What was the true reason why there was more rejoicing over his return home than over his ninety-nine brothers?  Surely, because he had actually learnt to understand and then become genuinely good. While his self-righteous brothers did neither of those.

J. Krishnamurti, whom Tolle has claimed as a major influence, insisted one should “question everything”. Of course, this would definitely be asking too much, for most people. Krishnamurti’s idea was that after you have “subtracted” everything your questioning reveals to be false, what remains must be “the truth”. Sounds like Sherlock Holmes, doesn’t it? It assumes your questioning is accurate, and quite nonjudgmental at the beginning.  

But in my experience, one of the biggest problems for people involved in personal growth or spirituality is that they often don’t apply any such questioning at all to the utterances of their teacher.

Let’s suppose a person like this also agrees with the “walking your talk” principle. Then what such people’s actions reveal they actually believe often seems quite different from what they claim to. Let’s suppose they don’t have a full understanding of, say, all of Tolle’s words. Then although they may say they “believe in” Tolle’s words, their actions will reveal they are sometimes quite hypocritical. That’s a problem my ebook, What’s Missing In Eckart Tolle, is designed to help any Tolle reader to overcome in great detail.  

I always prefer to concentrate mostly just on the practical implications of what a spiritual teacher is saying.

At the end of the day that’s the essence, as far as I am concerned. With that very much in mind, I’m now offering a free 28-page ebook, titled The Keys To What Tolle Teaches, to anyone who purchases my 96-page ebook, What’s Missing In Eckhart Tolle. Also free is an 8-page ebook titled Meditation: How It Really Works. Another free bonus is a 10-minute audio guiding you through a meditation session. For more details, click here:

Explaining Tolle Website 

 “Are you putting up with whatever is depressing your joy of life because you’re  afraid or scared of change? If the answer is yes, you are not being true. You are not being true to yourself.”  –  Barry Long

In Eckhart Tolle’s first major book, The Power Of Now, he writes that we reach the Now primarily through “observing” ourselves. (Self-) observation is certainly one of the most central themes in Tolle’s writings. At one of his retreats, Tolle has clarified that observation is only possible if we are being totally nonjudgmental. What does being totally nonjudgmental about ourselves imply? Well, for a start, among many things, I find it means deeply liking ourselves – which most people certainly don’t. It also means totally forgiving ourselves. That forgiveness doesn’t mean that we stop working on improvements to the mistakes we make. Because we’re forgiving ourselves for any mistakes, that doesn’t mean we don’t do our best to fix the mistakes, or to fix what made us do them. On the contrary! Because we forgive ourselves, only then can we see very clearly and understand what we really did and what its effects were. – Or I should say “are,” because we’re looking at the ongoing effects that are here now.  

I consider it’s unfortunate that he often uses the term “dis-identification” for such detachment in relation to personal change and growth. It’s not unfortunate in one sense. His critical analysis of society, in particularly the first half of A New Earth, is builton his descriptions of the negative consequences of “identifying with” any roles and so on. The reason I consider it’s unfortunate is that in the process of major personal change, the first stage can perhaps most accurately be described as one of identification of precisely what one’s inner obstacle is. Such identification is by no means always easy. It can take even very aware people months or years, in some instances. It can then sound a little confusing to tell somebody the next stage is “dis-identification.” Then again, Tolle often also says one needs to create “space” at that stage, which is great. The other difficulty is that he doesn’t describe the other stages of the process other than the second one in enough detail. Not in as much detail as is necessary, in all my experience.

If you have found any of Eckhart Tolle’s books, CDs, videos or appearances helpful, that can only be because he spoke to a yearning you had inside you. That yearning is to have a deeper experience, to be more fully yourself, in the truest possible way, in your life. You may have noticed that that yearning is painful, very painful. How could it be anything else, given the state of humanity and civilization and “human nature” as it is at present? You have undoubtedly noticed as well that the yearning is a thirst for love and stillness, at some level where love and stillness are one and the same.

At this point I have to criticize Tolle because, as I understand it, he plays down that pain. I appreciate some may jump to the false conclusion here that by making a criticism I obviously don’t have a wealth of the most profound experience of what I’m talking about. Tolle flatly dismisses all (emotional or psychological) pain as being nothing more than “a lack of awareness.” Most of the traditional meditation schools in effect do precisely the same – although some of the Western branches of e.g. Zen have recently been changing their position on this. I have to say that Tolle is flatly wrong here. You don’t heal yourself of your pain by “jump-starting” it with high-voltage awareness, so to speak. And as I understand it, what Tolle and the traditional meditation schools have believed effectively comes to just that.

The way it actually works, in all my years of experience and of counseling others, is as follows. Yes, you do need the high energy of that stillness that comes from meditation. But then you have to apply that energy to doing whatever it takes to make your life right in all practical areas – improving or obtaining the right job or business, and loving it; making all your relationships right, or, if it’s really necessary, having the courage to leave; and so on. The high energy of awareness doesn’t remove the pain. What removes the pain is your removing of the obstacle that was keeping you from being happy in real life. Then the pain goes. It goes because you have removed its cause. Even if the obstacle is mostly in your mind rather in the world external to you, it takes work and great determination and intention to get rid of it. And it takes very specific identification of what the obstacle is, plus a very specific intention regarding what you really want to replace the obstacle with. That also implies great persistence, if necessary. I’ve seen far too many fans of traditional meditation or of Tolle who seem to expect such an obstacle to “dissolve” into flat-out nonexistence if they float around in sufficiently intense bliss and peace on cloud nine. Sorry, but it doesn’t work in quite that magical kind of a way. 

Certainly, the usual behavior from most people is to get rid of pain by using an instant pain-killer of some kind. You know, entertainment, food, chatting, etc etc. That’s putting a band-aid over pain, where the band-aid is made of a lack of awareness.

I believe one thing that’s missing in Eckhart Tolle is a proper explanation of what we need to do instead of mindlessly using those pain-killers. This is particularly important because usually, finding great depths of stillness and love involves great pain, and a great deal of it. Fortunately, a person’s capacity to face pain greatly increases as they progress, so it doesn’t feel too bad. For more details, go to www.explainingtolle.com.
 

Many people have discovered how to experience greater inner peace as a result of reading one or more of Eckhart Tolle’s books. Yes, that truly is wonderful, for all those people, and for their friends and family. Here I want to describe what in all my observation is usually the next step for these same people to go forward. Unfortunately, many of them don’t seem to get to that step, — well, not fully. So I do hope this helps. (Some people see me as just spouting more Tolle criticism. I hope from this article it’ll be particularly clear that what I’m really trying to do is give people good suggestions about how to apply what Eckhart Tolle says more deeply in their lives.)

So let’s take it that you’ve read one of Eckhart Tolle’s books, and now you’re better able to sense and experience inner peace. (Again, you already have my congratulations and genuine appreciation.) Let me ask you: Is the following possibly true for you, in some way?  Almost anybody and anything you love keeps bringing up a little bit of pain inside you. You never specifically noticed that pain before, but now you’re somehow a little more sensitive. Maybe you’ve even noticed that that pain doesn’t go away – not until you’ve summoned up the courage and the persistence to just keep on facing it. As you “out-stare” one bit of pain, another bit arises to take its place, and it seems to be more intense. All of it coming out of or with your love, somehow. Then, with more of your “out-facing” of the pain for some days, it kind of magically lessens and disappears. It “dissolves,” if you like. At least for a while.  

Well, unfortunately some of Eckhart Tolle’s writings seem to suggest at times that you “dissolve” that pain with one click of your fingers, so to speak. And that then it’s all gone away, maybe one second after you identified it was there. But I’m sorry to say it simply doesn’t work that way. The more you become able to realize inner peace, the more deeply life will sooner or later put you into hell, and through the very people and things you love. Don’t worry! You haven’t lost any of the realization of peace that you’ve ever achieved, from any time in your life. What’s happened is that life always throws a deeper level of hell at you precisely because you’ve reached a deeper level of peace. You’re ready to handle it.

Simply keep going, keep facing what is. It’s my hope that because you’re somebody who’s reading this, there’s a good chance that the pain and the hell will eventually get less intense, permanently – but normally that’s only after a lot of baggage gets shipped out. Honestly, don’t you love a challenge?

Everybody knows that love somehow always brings lots of pain as well. And many of the classical myths are about how the hero has to go through the length and breadth of hell to win back his love the way he wanted that love to be. If you’re serious about inner or spiritual growth, this is surely your story too.
 

Eckhart Tolle claims that the reality of who we are is our “pure” consciousness, and that everything else that we consider to be “ourselves” is an illusion. I certainly agree that in our recent Western culture we have ignored the necessity to make consciousness one of the central things in our daily lives. But who “we” really are is mostly determined by what we’re responsible for. Whatever we’re 100% responsible for is literally a part of us, whether we like it or not. That means consciousness is part of us, but so is our stream of thoughts. And that does make an important difference.

Another way to look at this is to notice the importance of ideas in our lives. An idea, as distinct from a thought, is something fresh and (at least slightly) unique. Every idea comes out of our consciousness. It comes out of that “space,” as Tolle calls it, which seems like nothingness, and is formless. However, every idea does have a form. And the only way we can ever apply the idea, to “give it birth,” in the physical and emotional and intellectual world that we live in, is by using thoughts. 

So we see that without having and using thoughts we could not survive. It’s kind of similar to how our bodies can’t survive without blood. Blood certainly isn’t bad, unless it gets out of control and starts appearing in places where it shouldn’t.

Most of the things we do are dependent on the smooth working of subconscious or unconscious streams of thought. For instance, when you get up on any weekday morning, you probably follow a routine on “automatic pilot.” That routine gets you efficiently through showering and breakfast and personal grooming and out your front door. You probably aren’t even aware of the thoughts which that routine runs through your brain. You rarely remember any of them, — do you?

The extraordinary and beautiful thing about consciousness is that it’s indivisible. It’s so indivisible that in its purest form, it is totally one with everyone and everything in the universe. The only problem is, while we’re living in this physical world, that’s only half the story. We’re like a drop in the ocean. Yes, that drop can become aware of its oneness with ocean. By doing so, by being totally in harmony with the ocean, it can in a certain limited sense be the ocean. But equally, it has no choice but to be true to its uniqueness and individuality as well. It has a specific location in time and space at every moment. “Now” does not mean “everywhere at the same time.” And that fact makes a significant amount of thought and analysis necessary in almost every area of our lives. 

In some parts of Eckhart Tolle’s writings he makes it clear he doesn’t see thinking or thoughts as a problem in themselves. It’s just that in most people’s lives the analytical or word-creating part of the mind has turned into The Sorcerer’s Apprentice gone gangbusters. But Tolle does little to tell us exactly what it is about lack of control of that stream of thought that makes it so harmful – or why it has gone so berserk in so many people. And yes, I do agree with Tolle that it has gone sadly berserk.

Part of the truth here is that our parents, and then years of the education system, brainwash us into experiencing little else but (analytical) thinking and memory-based thinking for many hours every day. In our society, intuition doesn’t get developed. Unfortunately, we’re not like the animals, or most indigenous people. They all learn to know very accurately by sensing – by spending more time sensing than thinking. (Not that animals are capable of much thinking.) If you talk to anyone in our culture who is highly intuitive – such as a genuine creative artist or a truly genuine clairvoyant, and so on – you’ll learn that at times they think much more than the “normal” person. Because it takes the “scalpel” of critical looking to make sure you have found the truth. The difference is, in such people there is a balance between intuition and (analytical) thinking. What Tolle sometimes calls “space” is the use of the intuition. And that’s what gives us back our control –over our lives!

 The education system does teach us to use our intuition in certain, rather limited ways, however. In particular, it teaches us to question everything at least a little. It teaches us to look and see how we really feel about anything, what we really like and deserve and prefer. And I claim that is certainly one of the biggest reasons behind the rise in the consciousness level of humanity in recent times.

 In the next blog I’ll go more deeply into this very deceptive topic of what “thinking” is, and really how it does and doesn’t work.

In my experience, most people certainly do find Tolle confusing, at least on some important questions. But whether you do or not, my new ebook is deigned to help you develop or enrich your spiritual practice and your understanding. I’m happy to announce it’s now available.

If you’re interested, click here:     NEW EBOOK

Before you begin to do any exercises or use any method for your development, you need to be 100% ready and willing to change. You see, in The Power of Now, Tolle does mention that if you are going to stay in the Now, then that can involve experiencing a lot of pain. And what virtually everyone tries to do when there is pain is to run away and escape from it.  We look for short term pleasures, addictions or attachments which will temporarily remove the pain we feel with something positive. But it doesn’t work over the long term.  In fact, in the long run it causes more pain and we feel worse and we end up in a never-ending cycle.  So if you are going to do it, you must be serious and willing to make the change and face up to the pain you could experience.

You have to be willing to go out of your comfort zone often, and especially in your major choices. And that does actually give you what seems like an experience of greater pain than normal.  The extraordinary thing that happens when you do this, is that your ability to handle pain and your ability to stay more positive and feel better greatly increases. So you have to be willing to live this kind of life, of continually pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, because that’s the only way you’ll grow.

If you want to make changes in your life - then you’re going to have to make changes in your life! And you can only make changes in your life if you continually make changes in yourself. And that does hurt!

Once you’ve decided you are committed to it, you can start by reading my ebook and working through the exercises.  You can read Tolle’s books as well. The exercises and the principles I’ve developed don’t require any prior experience or knowledge, although you do need to develop certain skills progressively. So you certainly need to be willing to work on yourself, and to develop and to practice the methods and principles. But that’s true of any spiritual teaching.

Of course, the benefit is that you end up getting "dessert". You gradually discover more and more that reality and life contains far more beauty and joy than even the wildest optimist would imagine. But you have to learnt to have the "eyes to see it".